Image Gallery

Our good friend and 2x Juxtapoz cover artist (most recently the November 2012 Political Art issue, a real gem if you ask us) is about to showcase a new series of paintings, Popagandastan, at Corey Helford Gallery in Culver City this October 26, 2013. Just in time for Halloween. Last month teased a few of the paintings from the show, and today we have a few more for you.

RON ENGLISH, world famous artist/provocateur, pioneer of street art and pop surrealism, has created his most ambitiously conceptual exhibition to date. POPAGANDASTAN is a series of lavishly painted canvases depicting the expansive universe that lies just beneath the surface of our consciousness, somewhere down an inter-dimensional rabbit-hole.

Like an Acid-Pop Aesop’s Fable, these paintings serve as a conceptual battleground for a multitude of viewpoints in harmonic opposition, creating the ultimate Pop Utopia. English has populated his visionary village with his original characters, each the embodiment of a distinct aspect of the human condition.

The central character is Ronnnie Rabbbit, a three-eyed neurotic rabbit whose two brains argue each side to every argument. The Combrats are a feral group of doe eyed, runaway, militaristic, dinosaur riding clowns who enforce community law. The Snappers are slow moving antagonists of a destructive, hyperactive culture of planned obsolescence. The Wolves are resentful, self aggrandizing dethroned inhabitants of a world they once ruled. The sheep are a cult like tribe that clings to its self-styled spiritual creationism. The Quacks are ambitious, lovable charlatans and creators of quack, the drug that makes you believe anything you think. The Buddha Burgers are a family of supersized proponents of fast food and unbridled consumerism. The Cowgirls are Mother Nature personified, embodying an oddly exhilarating combination of fertility, food and sexual desire.

The story of Popagandastan is told through a dizzying kaleidoscope of surrealist imagery composed of the aspirational iconography and detritus of the TV generation.